The Un-Civil War

It’s been 150 years since Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter, officially launching America’s Civil War. No conflict before or since has so affected America. It put more than 600,000 people in early graves, left many thousands more scarred for life, and cut a swathe of deprivation and destruction across many areas of the South.

When we think of the war today, places like Gettysburg and Vicksburg immediately come to mind. Yet the Smoky Mountains felt the war just the same and were a divided land. Many of the region’s residents remained loyal to the Union, while others stood with the South. The fighting that echoed through the hollows and across the mountaintops was vicious and bloody, and it saw neighbor square off against neighbor.

When the war finally ended, the region was in disarray. Families were torn apart, fields lay untilled and cribs and storehouses yawned empty. Livestock had been driven off or taken away. Property was in disrepair. Orchards lay waste. Here and there, charred heaps of lumber or piles of rubble marked where buildings had once stood. 

Many states are planning to commemorate the Civil War’s sesquicentennial. In North Carolina, a number of exhibitions and special events are planned, including a series of panels that begin in May at the North Carolina Museum of History. Tennessee’s Sesquicentennial Commission is sponsoring conferences on various topics, including occupation, liberation, and reconstruction. Not to be outdone, the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission is dispatching a 3,000-square-foot exhibition to eight different Virginia museums between 2012 and 2015, and is also collecting manuscripts, letters, diaries, and photos related to the war. For its part, Georgia is planning to replace missing historical markers, repair damaged ones, and introduce new markers on previously unexplored wartime topics. 

Our twenty-first century process of remembering is not without controversy, as many groups, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the NAACP, disagree on what form that should take. Clearly passions over this part of our history remain high, even 150 years later. Whatever your point of view, it is important to mark this terrible conflict, as it shaped who we are as a nation today, and it will affect who we are tomorrow. 

There’s no better place to start than with the historical sites and museums that dot the Smokies and offer many perspectives. Involvement started in the fall of 1861, when Union sympathizers burned several key railroad bridges in East Tennessee to pave the way for a Federal invasion. A memorial to the bridge-burners stands in Mosheim, Tenn.,  near the graves of two participants. 

The small town of Marshall, deep in the mountains of North Carolina, is a good spot to remember the bloody, guerilla part of the war. One January day in 1863, the vicious mountain war came to a head in Marshall. A band of Union soldiers and sympathizers raided the town, burned and looted a few buildings, and executed thirteen prisoners. The event is remembered today as the Shelton Laurel Massacre.

Knoxville saw the region’s heaviest fighting. It was an important objective for Union armies. As Abraham Lincoln wrote, the city not only was the home of many loyal people, but it also cut “a great artery of the enemies’ communication.” In 1863, Union and Confederate forces wrestled for control of the city. A few monuments and historical markers on the edge of the University of Tennessee campus mark the battlefield and the resulting Federal victory. Nearby stands the headquarters for Confederate General James Longstreet. The East Tennessee History Center is an educational stop, and the Knoxville Visitor Center has maps for a driving tour. Meanwhile, a smaller battlefield can be found on the other side of the state line, in Asheville. Union soldiers attacked the town twice in 1865. One of the incursions sparked a small battle that is still remembered with historical markers.

No tour of the past is complete without recognizing the contributions of the people of the times. Perhaps no other person signifies the divided loyalties of these mountains more than Andrew Johnson. Although a Southerner, Johnson became the Union military governor of Tennessee and went on to serve as Lincoln’s vice president and then president after Lincoln’s death. The Andrew Johnston National Historic Site in Greeneville, Tenn., is a must-see, and so is the contrasting Dickson-Williams Mansion, where the famous Confederate cavalry raider Gen. John Hunt Morgan died. Travelers should also visit the home of North Carolina’s wartime governor, Zebulon B. Vance, in Weaverville, N.C. Exhibits explain his career and also that of his brother, a Confederate general.

For more information on these and the many Civil War sites in the Smokies, visit civilwartrails.org. Details on sesquicentennial events can be found at numerous state websites, including nccivilwar150.com, virginiacivilwar.org/commission.php, and tnvacation.com/civil-war/.

In his famous Gettysburg Address, Lincoln fairly observed that it is well beyond our power to consecrate what the brave men and women of that era faced and what they accomplished. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated,” the president went on, “to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.” 

Some 150 years later, we can do no less.